Saturday, September 4, 2010

August Finished, September Beginning


     August was an extremely busy month for me!  Before I get into my list of coffees and games consumed/played in August, here are a few things that happened in August.
Many of you may not know, but I am officially back in college now full-time.  My classes started on August 16, and I'm enrolled in four different classes/labs:
1) Simulation & Games (SGD) 111 - Introduction to Simulation and Games
2) SGD 112 - SGD Design
3) SGD 116 - SGD Graphic Design Tools
4) Computer Information Systems 115 - C++

Here are the books I have for the classes:
SGD 111 -

SGD 112 -

SGD 116 -

CIS 115 -

     On top of starting school, I had to show up for jury duty on August 25, and thought that because I was a student I could get dismissed easily.  I was told that if I was dismissed, I would have to be back in either November or December, so I decided I would just wait it out and get it over with quickly...at least I thought that!
     I ended up being selected as a juror for a trial, and the trial lasted Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; it ended in a mistrial!  It was a very interesting experience though, and it showed me how crazy the legal system is.

     With the start of school and a lot going on in August, I consumed a good bit of coffee, and did find some time to play some games.  Let's take a look...

Coffees Consumed in August:
     Trader Joe's Organic Fair Trade Five Country Espresso Blend Dark Roast

     The one coffee oddity you may have noticed was the Folgers Classic Decaf Medium Roast, because I normally don't drink decaf.
     The weekend after I started school, we had some friends come in town and stay with us.  The first night they were here, I asked if anybody wanted coffee at about 11:00PM or so, and my friend said he would take decaf if we had any.  After the initial shock of somebody requesting decaf wore off, I went and dug through our pantry to see if had any; sure enough, we did, and I brewed us some.

Games Played in August:
     Groovin' Blocks (WiiWare)
     Rage of the Gladiator (WiiWare)
     Monster Hunter Tri (Wii)

     When our friends visited us, they brought New Super Mario Bros. Wii with them.  If you weren't following my blog back in January, you may have missed my post, "New Super Mario Bros. Wii Causes Marriage Problems!?"  My friend knew that Mrs. CwG and I had played New Super Mario Bros. Wii before, and during the weekend, we attempted a four player battle against Bowser.
     There was lots of friendly yelling and screaming, and "BUBBLE!!" was probably shouted 100 times, but we were successful, completing it with four players.
     During the weekend they visited, a lot of games were played.  The amount we played Excitebots: Trick Racing surprised me the most, and I still had a lot of fun with the game.
     When our friends departed, we did an old school "trade" on games.  He had been renting Super Mario Galaxy from the library, but the game was scratched up and had issues playing in his Wii.  I own Super Mario Galaxy, so he "traded" me New Super Mario Bros. Wii, for Super Mario Galaxy.  It's not a permanent trade, but it will be for a while.

Totals:
     In August, I had five different coffee blends, and I played eight different video games.  One of the coffee blends I should be posting about separately in a few days.

Questions:
     What games did you play during August, and did you have any drink of choice during August while gaming?

6 comments:

  1. Just here to wish you good luck on this endeavor of yours.
    I will admit that it's pretty surprising that you've chosen to go the game design route because based on your blog, I thought the marketing department in the gaming industry was probably something you'd have more of an interest for.

    Also, even though this isn't pretty surprising based on Nintendo's history of offering superb quality gameplay, they did an incredible job of providing such a great local multiplayer experience for New Super Mario Bros. Wii (especially with this being their first Mario game that has a multiplayer component).

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  2. I hope you'll find your courses to be interesting. I'm studying computer science and while I wouldn't mind programming in any field, my first choice would definitely be videogames.

    As for the games, I barely played consoles this month. Shadow of the Ninja, Picross 3D and Absolute BrickBuster. All of that probably amounted to no more than 1 hour of play time.

    I started the month playing Starcraft. My brother has been playing SC2 a lot so I thought I would install the original on my laptop and go through the campaign. I've had the Battle Chest package for almost 10 years now and barely touched it. I completed the original Terran campaign and 2 Zerg misssions.

    Then I suddenly got an urge for good adventure games, so I started playing Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers for the first time. It is quite an amazing game. The game takes place over 10 days and I am now on day 7. When I make it through, I'll immediately start playing the sequel, The Beast Within. I've had that game for about 12 years now, but got stuck at the beginning of chapter 4 (out of 6 I believe) because of a scratched CD. Now I'll be playing the DVD version.

    Playing old classics is bringing back a joy of gaming I don't find in most games these days. I miss the days when games were made to be classics and not simply time wasters, cash-ins or whatever. Sometimes it seems only Nintendo cares and has the talent to make them. Others need to step up, and it might as well be us!

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  3. @NabucaCPM:
    Thanks for the wish man! I really do enjoy helping promote games on my...even though it's usually the smaller WiiWare titles. Being that I don't have a lot of funds, I can't purchase games often, so I'm limited to what I can help promote.

    I am pursuing an opportunity right now, with a local company that may turn out to be more towards the marketing side of things; but I won't know for sure for a few months.

    You know, all Nintendo has to do for their next system and games is add online play. People will love it even more.
    I can already see, "Nintendo announced New Super Mario Bros. HD with online play!" It could very well be a copy/paste of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, but with updated graphics and online play added to it.

    @Jonath:
    Yea, so far I'm enjoying the classes. The program is a 2 year degree, BUT the program will transfer all its credits into a 4 year computer science degree if I choose to go that route.

    I have a lot of old games that I should probably just play and beat before buying anything new...I was doing good with that self-made rule until about January/February of this year.

    Thank you both for the well wishes and comments/feedback!

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  4. Let's see, I played L4D2, Alien Swarm and the Torchlight Demo. I may get the latter game to hold me over until Diablo 3 comes out.

    Coffees consumed:
    Trader Joe's (TJ) organic french roast.
    TJ 5 Country Espresso blend.
    And this Amazon Organic kind found at http://tinyurl.com/2fvq7aj
    Out of all of them is the TJ espresso blend (I'm drinking it right now actually.)

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  5. Playing old games only works until something interesting comes along. I know I'll be dropping everything when DKCR comes out.

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  6. @Charlie Chang:
    At least you are still playing L4D2 on a regular basis and haven't moved on. Alien Swarm...was that the Steam game you mentioned one time?
    Also, I think somebody else mentioned playing Torchlight in the last week or so, I don't remember who though.

    There are so many coffee blends, it's crazy! I didn't even know of the one you linked to, until I clicked it.

    @Jonath:
    "Playing old games only works until something interesting comes along." You mean, until the marketing of the new games work and cause me to part with my money! I don't know if I'll be purchasing DKCR, but it will be on my, "I want to play" list.

    Thank you both for the comments/feedback!

    ReplyDelete

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